How to Bring Back Word's 2003 Classic Menus and Toolbars

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I have come up with a way to bring back Word's 2003 Classic Menus and Toolbars for FREE. And you can do this for free with a little effort.

First, everyone needs to understand that there are some core changes in 2007; therefore, you cannot completely replicate 2003 Menus and Toolbars. Some buttons will not cross over to 2007 because of these core changes. So don't complain.

Second, you need Microsoft Word 2003. If you don't have it, you need to find a computer that has it so you can carry out the first 6 steps.

Are we ready? Here we go:

1) First, open up Microsoft Word 2003. Click on "Tools", then choose "Customize..."

2) On the "Toolbars" tab, click on the "New..." button. Under "Toolbar Name", call it "2003Menu".

3) You should have a blank toolbar to work with. Now, click on the "Commands" tab and under "Categories", click on "Built-in Menus". Then, one by one, drag and drop them on the new empty toolbar.

4) Repeat steps 2 and create a new toolbar called "2003Standard". Then, go to "Commands" tab and find the buttons that match your standard toolbar.

5) Repeat the above to create a toolbar called "2003Formatting". Again, find all the buttons that belong on that toolbar and drop them on the toolbar.

6) Customize the buttons any way you want. You can even add your macro buttons! Here's what mine looks like:

7) Ok, now you should have created your menu, Standard toolbar, and Formatting toolbar. Now, close Word so that these toolbars are saved in the default Normal.dot template. Then go to %appdata%\Microsoft\Office\Templates\ and find the Normal.dot file. It should be about 33 Kb, more or less. It may be more if you have macros and other things. Copy this file so you can take it to a computer with Microsoft Office 2007.

8) Now, open Microsoft Word 2007 (probably on a different computer). Then, go to %userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP\ and paste the Normal.dot there. Now, when you open Word 2007, it will show your classic menus in a tab called Add-ins and group called "Custom Toolbars". This tab is automatically displayed. Here's the result. It's not 100% the same but it's better than nothing for free:

I hope this will help those who are 2003 nostalgic and quell some of the "I hate 2007 GUI".

Of course, I'm not sure how it's done for Excel and Powerpoint, but I'm sure someone can figure it out and post it here.

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Being that the file is just word template, I believe it would be legal under the EULA to distribute it. To my knowledge the only thing not allowed to be distributed is compiled files, bitmaps and sounds.